


The Long March

by Leapfroggie



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, I mean so minor you might miss it, Jonsa if you squint real hard, Minor Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Not A Fix-It, Not a rewrite, Season/Series 08, Show-compliant, Sister-Sister Relationship, Sort Of, also not beta'ed we die like the stupid people we are, season 8 missing moment, sister bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23226364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leapfroggie/pseuds/Leapfroggie
Summary: Sansa, from Winterfell to King's Landing, for the sake of her pack.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Jon Snow & Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Jon Snow & Sansa Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	The Long March

The raven flies in a few days after the previous one, but this scroll is not in Jon’s hand to tell her of the dragon queen’s intention to storm the capital. No, this new one is written by a clumsy set of shortened fingers, and signed shakily by the titles of the onion knight. It narrates, in as few words as possible, the fall of King’s Landing, the fires and all those dead people. Sansa cannot help but gasp at this part. The city had been a cesspit, and she may have drowned in despair and pain there. Yet it had been called home by half a million people. She cannot bear to think of how hard they fought to save the living, of the compromises they all had to make to fight against the dead, of how she had to submit to Daenerys Targaryen for her to condescend to help, only for her to turn around and kill more people the Night King ever did, in less than a day.

The thought chokes her enough that she has to press down her urge to vomit.

It takes her a long time to calm down enough she can attend to the rest of the scroll, and then the panic blinds her for so long she’s glad she cleared her morning to take care of her correspondance in peace. There is no true peace in that solitude, but there is also no whiny lordling to catch her sitting at her desk and grasping at its edges so hard her knuckles turn white as she wills herself to control her breathing.

Arya and Jon are alive, and Daenerys Targaryen is dead. Those are the good news. She tries to focus on that, and it helps, somewhat. But Jon stands accused of kinslaying and queenslaying and faces death, and that is hard to ignore.

After a long time, she deems herself calm enough to summon Brienne. There is much work to do, and she’s wasted enough energy doing nothing.

“Tell Maester Wolkan I have a reply to send to Ser Davos immediately. I’ll also need to send a raven to Riverrun. I need Lord Royce and Lord Manderly in immediately. Tell my maid to pack for travel – but tell her to pack lightly, we shall ride fast, there will be no wheelhouse. Prepare yourself accordingly.”

Brienne looks at her uncomprehendingly.

“As you wish, my Lady,” she says, and then she hesitates: “May I ask where we are going?”

“We are marching South,” Sansa answers, her eyes glittering harshly as she looks into the fire. “I have one of mine to get back.”

It’s harder to keep her courage up as the preparations go on, though. Once, she had sworn never to go south of the Neck again, and htere she was, betraying herself not so long after. And yet, as much as she flinches every time she closes her eyes and can’t help but picture the spires of the Red Keep and the glittering metal of Kingsguard armour coming down upon her, the terror that fills her at the idea of Jon dying is so much more intense she has a hard time to stop herself from snapping at everyone. Everything is going both too slow and too fast.

Once she’s arranged everything with the Lords, she goes to see Bran.

“I need to come with you,” he says, and she closes her eyes in unsurprised aggravation. Somehow, she had known he would say that.

“You will travel with Ser Belmore and his knights, and join up with Lord Tully and Lord Arryn’s parties at Darry,” she says, sitting near the fire. “I’ve already sent the ravens, and they are to assemble as many men as could possibly remain. Will they answer?”

Bran looks at her with his impenetrable eyes.

“You know they will. Or you wouldn’t have sent the ravens,” he points out.

Sansa sighs. She’s as convinced as she lets herself be these days, but she would have liked some confirmation from her all-seeing brother. She knows he won’t tell her any more than that, though, so it will have to do. She’s starting to get used to his new idiosyncracies.

“Lord Manderly will stay in charge of the North, and no Stark shall be left in Winterfell,” she warns.

“Winter has come,” Bran answers, as if it was enough of a justification.

“I will go ahead and join with our troops outside of King’s Landing. Or what is left of it, and them, I guess,” she grimaces.

“She did almost everything, her and her dragon,” Bran says. “Very few of the Northmen died.”

While the Dothraki and Unsullied had been hit severely by Euron Greyjoy’s fleet on the way back to Dragonstone. These were good news, at least.

“I wish you would stay,” she says, getting up and smoothing down her dress. “I guess there is no convincing you?”

It’s not really a question, so it’s not really a surprise when Bran just looks at her and declines answering. Sansa turns and walks to the door, and she’s about to open it when she finally builds up the courage to ask the one question she really wants to ask, the one which answer she’s really afraid of.

“Will they kill him?”

If her voice trembles a little, it’s no matter. Bran either won’t sense or won’t care for it.

“You’ll find a way,” he says.

Maybe it’s supposed to be reassuring, but Bran losts his capacity for reassuring inflexions the same way he lost all his other inflexions, and toneless encouragements never went very far. 

Quite honestly, Sansa is a bit tired of always having to find ways for her pack to survive. She wishes it were easier to keep people alive. She wishes the world would stop trying to hurt them. She wishes many things, little and great, and she’s long learnt that wishes are not worth the time spent imagining them, and still she keeps wishing them all the same. Pretty silly bird, never learning. But there is one wish, dearest than them all, that she keeps close to her heart, and that is her pack, safe in Winterfell. If she has to march South to try and make it true, then march she will.

This thought keeps her going through the travel down the Kingsroad, when every time they stop she’s like to turn back and flee to the reassurance of home. It’s slow going, with the winter snows, and it leaves her with much time for reflection. They pass Moat Caitlin and she thinks of Theon, dead and gone in the flames. They pass the Twins without seeing them, and she thinks of Robb and her lady mother, and all those Freys, dead as well, and of Arya. But Arya is alive, alive, and Sansa presses her gloved hands against the fur of her mare, keeping the reins lax. At Darry she thinks of Lady, gone so long and still an empty gash at the center of her, and of her uncle Edmure and her cousin Robin. But they’re not there yet, she’s come too fast, and she dares not wait. She marches on, despite Brienne’s urgings to at least stay one more night.

“It cannot be more than two days. They might even be here on the morrow,” her sworn shield argues.

“On the morrow, they may kill Jon. In two days, my sister may be dead,” Sansa answers, her eyes tracked on the road before them, her mind focused on calculations of distance and speed.

They do not even make camp at Darry, despite all of Brienne’s pleas.

They finally sight King’s Landing just shy of the second moon’s turn since they left Winterfell. Sansa might have known what happened there, but nothing could have prepared her for the ruin that Daenerys Targaryen had made of the capital her ancestors built.

From their vantage point, they can appraise the whole city: the Sept Sansa had expected to be gone, blown away as it had been by Cersei’s folly. She hadn’t expected the other large stretches of destruction, though. Flea Bottom is gone entirely, the ramshackle wooden houses having probably been no barrier to dragonfire. The other parts of the city haven’t fared much better: what is still left standing appears to only be there by grace of not having stood in the direct path of the dragon’s rampage, and all the rest reduced to blackened ruble.

The Red Keep is a dark disfiguration against the sky, too great a structure to have been flattened by one sole dragon, but not great enough to withstand its fires. The Tower of the Hand is destroyed: few of the towers are left standing, in truth. It would be hard to say from the distance, and for someone less intimately acquainted with the castle as Sansa is, but some of the stones have melted. There is a second Harrenhal standing in Westeros now. It seems to her it is a great irony that it also spelt the end of a royal dynasty, though this one could also be considered a suicide.

They can also see the Kingsroad leading up to where the main gate had used to stand. From there a trickling stream of people sludges away from the ruins, the few survivors fleeing what would soon be a phantom city. A military camp is set up outside the walls, and the Direwolf banner flies above it. Sansa’s heart fills when she spots it, though she wouldn’t call the emotion joy, given the circumstances.

When they trot down to the camp, she’s greeted by Ser Davos, who looks like he hasn’t slept in a week.

“This way, my Lady,” he says. “Your sister awaits you.”

Had she been anyone else, she might have jumped down from her horse to squeeze him in her arms. Seven hells, she might have even smiled, but she’s Sansa Stark and she’s barely capable of expressing feelings before anyone that is not her family, not matter how overwhelming they are.

Both Davos and Brienne chose to remain outside after he shows her to her sister’s tent, and she’s immensely grateful for their discretion.

Arya, of course, is not surprised by her arrival, because nothing surprises Arya anymore. They look at each other for two long seconds, searching for something in the other’s face, though Sansa couldn’t have said what she expected to find, and her sister seemed to be satisfied in half that time. Then they embrace each other fiercely.

“I feared you might be dead,” Sansa whispers into her sister’s dark hair, squeezing her fiercely.

“I am not easy to kill,” Arya mumbles, though it lacks some of her usual conviction.

“I know that. I wish you would stop getting them to try, though.”

Arya sighs but doesn’t answer, which is enough to inform Sansa about how close her sister flirted with death this time around.

“I thought you weren’t coming South,” Arya finally says as she steps away from the embrace.

“I thought so too. Nothing good ever comes from Starks going South,” she says, and makes a gesture at her sister and, vaguely, at the rest of their surroundings. “Which is why I had to step in.”

“You won’t let them kill him, will you?” Arya asks, and for half a second she’s the kid she used to be before the war changed them. 

Sansa hides her relief at this confirmation that Jon is still alive. Until now, she still hadn’t been sure.

“Of course we won’t,” she says firmly, taking a seat. “I’d rather raze King’s Landing a second time to the ground than let them touch him. Though I would like to understand what happened exactly. The information was rather sparse.”

“I don’t know we have more than you,” Arya says, pacing across the tent. “That stupid Unsullied commander won’t let me see him, and the Imp hasn’t been able to convince him either.”

“Tyrion is free, then?” Sansa asks sharply.

“Why would he not be?”

“Why indeed,” Sansa mutters, rubbing her temples.

“Even if he had been, I wager he would have talked his way out of his cell quick enough,” Arya points out. “He’s good with his tongue, that one. One day he’ll trick the Stranger into letting him live until he’s tasted all the wines in the world.”

“That would certainly be an option for him,” Sansa smiles. “Anyways, Lord Tyrion being free is actually good for us.”

“Lord Lannister,” Arya interrupts.

“What?”

“Lord Lannister. Jaime Lannister died during the attack on the Red Keep, along with Cersei. So he’s Lord Lannister now. Isn’t that the way it works?”

“Yes,” Sansa says, absent-mindedly. She thinks of Brienne standing outside, and how they had known, but not heard any confirmation. “That is the way it works, I guess.”

Though she has to wonder at the worth her former husband would attribute to that prize he had so long coveted, now that it had cost him everything: his whole family, extinct save for him, the Westerlands ravaged by war, and Casterly Rock taken and sacked by his own hand, acting on behalf of the dragon queen. At least he had saved it from dragonfire. That would have to be consolation enough.

“Should we set to work?” she says, bringing her mind back to task. “We have a cousin to save from the consequences of his mistakes.”

“Brother,” Arya corrects, finally sitting down.

“Call him what you want, he’s a Stark any way,” Sansa waves her protest away.

“You’ll never consider him your brother, not truly, will you?”

“Does it matter? I love him enough to come South for his sake, don’t I?” Sansa shrugs. “He’s my family, and I’ll save him if I have to find and kill that giant lizard myself, brother or not.”

Arya is silent for a moment, her gaze pensive on Sansa’s face. Sansa wonders what she sees there, and if there is something to see. If her sister does find anything, she doesn’t share it.

“He was very stupid, though, wasn’t he? Even though we warned him so much,” Arya finally says, throwing her hands up.

“Yes, he was. Let’s make sure he doesn’t overpay for his ignorance of our advice, though,” Sansa smiles, though her fears are far from abated. The Westerosi Lords she knows how to handle and manipulate into doing her bidding, and the Dothraki appear simple enough to handle if they could get someone to translate properly. But the Unsullied are an unknown quantity, and she’s not sure how much of them are left and how much of an hindrance they might be.

“Bran will arrive in a few days,” she says. “And I’ve sent ravens to all the remaining Lords in the kingdom, to convene a council. We’ll have to meet with Lord Lannister and that Unsullied commander, to convince them of the necessity to hold one. We cannot leave the kingdom in such shambles long, someone will need to oversee the war repairs.”

“Convince them?” Arya sneers. “They’ve barely a thousand men left standing, and we have, what, ten times that number? We don’t have to ask them for anything.”

The number estimation of the remaining Targaryen forces would have sounded reassuring to Sansa’s ears, had it not been immediately followed by a rather gross overestimation of their own forces.

“I doubt we field more than three thousands, four at the most. We might have more when the Vale and the Riverlands arrive, but let’s not pin our hopes on external help.” she replies delicately, drumming her fingers against the armrest of her chair. “While it is more than enough to overpower them, as I am sure they will be aware, I’d rather it not come to that. Should they chose to fight, we would take huge loss, and we have lost enough lives to these wars.”

Arya appraises her again – it is rather unnerving, this new tendency of hers – and nods. She’s supped on death enough as well, it appears.

“Fine. I trust you. I’m guessing you have a plan in that pretty, smart head of yours.”

“Well. Actually, I think Bran has one of his own, but it might overlap quite nicely with our goals.”

**Author's Note:**

> Confinement leaves me with way more free time than I'm used to, and my love for Sansa hasn't abated, so... Yeah.  
> I always thought it was a measure of how much Sansa loved Jon and Arya that she marched South though she hates King's Landing with a visceral passion just to get their asses back North.


End file.
